In the mid-twenties, I had this semi-ironic comic book collection.
Doing it as a bit.
Like so much of my life, I was doing it as a bit. I was enjoying it.
We here at the Looper Show love bits.
We do. What was the last movie that you saw on theaters before the pandemic?
Cats.
That's right. So I had three long boxes of going to see Cats in theaters.
We are going to talk about Moon Knight today. We're going to talk about what fans want to
see in the Moon Knight television series that is coming to Disney Plus at some point
in the not too distant future, starring Oscar Isaac
as Moon Knight and Ethan Hawke as I don't know, Sun Ninja. What's the opposite? Who is-
The Day Man, I think.
The Day Man. Why didn't I think of that? I feel like a moron.
The fighter of the night, man.
So Tom, I think out of the three of us,
you probably know the most about Moon Knight. My knowledge of him is
based mostly on collecting Marvel cards when I was a kid and never reading a Moon Knight comic.
Totally fair.
So I know little bits and pieces from the internet, from working at Looper, from being
a person who used to be in comic bookstores a lot. But other than that, it's pretty blank.
I know the basics. So Tom, what do you think fans are looking for in the Moon Knight series?
I don't know what fans are looking for, but I can tell you what I'm looking for in a Moon Knight series.
Please do.
Because I did, I got sort of into Moon Knight there for a little while. In the mid-twenties,
I had this semi-ironic comic book collection.
Doing it as a bit.
Like so much of my life, I was doing it as a bit. I was enjoying it.
We here at the Looper Show love bits.
We do. What was the last movie that you saw in theaters before the pandemic?
Cats.
That's right. So I had three long boxes of going to see Cats in theaters.
And one of the things that I got really into was Moon Knight, and it was because there was this
video game back in the mid-two-thousands called Ultimate Alliance, where you got
to make a team of superheroes and have them fight their way through, so it's a fun game-
Wait, like Backyard Baseball but with superheroes?
It's exactly like that. I don't know.
And my brother and I would play it, and we would play it with,
on purpose, just the worst teams that we could put together. So it was just all the worst characters.
It like Mr. Fantastic, yeah, and pre-movie Ms. Marvel and Moon Knight.
So characters that just don't go together at all.
So Mr. Fantastic and Moon Knight was already a pairing that does not work.
Exactly. Yeah, and that was what got me into the character was like, "Oh, this
guy kind of sucks." And then I started reading a bunch of the comics, and frequently, he does.
He's one of those characters that if you get a great writer on board,
really terrific stories come out. But the rest of the time, he's sort of a minefield of bad ideas.
He's got multiple personalities. And is he crazy, or is he
the champion of the ancient Egyptian moon god, Khonsu?
It's weird. It's like any other comic book character.
The potential for fun is there; so is the potential for just really cringy, bad stuff.
What I am looking for in the Moon Knight series, actually, it kind of springs from the Eternals
movie and a moment that happened in there where one of the characters gets asked if he's Superman,
right, which implies that DC comics exist in the MCU.
What I would really like to see is for
Marc Spector, for Moon Knight, to be explaining his whole deal to somebody
and going, "I leap from building to building dressed in a monochromatic uniform, fight
justice in the nighttime, and I fly around in an airplane that shaped like my favorite thing."
And then somebody's like, "So like Batman?" And he's like, "No, not like Batman."
What I really want is just a whole episode of him trying to explain to somebody how he's not
ripping off Batman. "I throw boomerangs in the shape of my favorite thing at criminals,
and I'm really good at martial arts, and I don't really have any superpowers."
"So like Batman?" "No, not like Batman."
That's what I want. That's what I think the fans want.
That's what you think the fans want. You want Moon Knight to
have an awful explanation as to why he's not ripping off Batman?
Yeah, I want to see how hard he can lean into
trying to explain that no, this isn't just Batman but in white instead of black.
On that same note, I'd really like in the Morbius movie, at some point, someone to say,
"It's some kind of Batman." And then they're like,
"What are you talking about?" And then the hard cut to the next scene.
Yeah. Terrific.
That's my personal fantasy. But anyway, sorry, I've gotten way off track already.
We all have.
Nina, what about you? What do you think fans want
to see? What do you want to see in the Moon Knight TV series?
Oscar Isaac's beautiful face. Mostly just that.
I'm going to watch it for Oscar Isaac. I love Oscar Isaac. I
don't know anything about Moon Knight. Sorry.
Don't apologize.
I'm putting it out there. I don't know anything about Moon Knight.
I did read our article on Looper.com though, and something interested me about Moon Knight.
And it led me to a Hollywood Reporter opinion piece from 2019
that kind of talked about the way that the Moon Knight comics dealt with mental illness and mental
health, because the character has dissociative personality disorder, but it's a superpower.
And he can choose what his personalities are is what I gleaned from this, which is-
Super mental illness.
... extremely not how that works.
Sometimes.
Right. And so in recent years, we've seen a lot of shows
throughout wildly different genres tackle mental health. So you had BoJack Horseman,
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, You're The Worst: three shows that I really love.
You have specials like Bo Burnham's Inside that are very direct about the struggles of living with
a mental illness or mental health problems but are presented in a totally different
format. And I think to my mind, the only superhero thing, especially Marvel,
that has tackled this is Jessica Jones, which dealt with PTSD pretty effectively.
If I'm missing something, tell me. I might be.
Iron Man 3.
Iron Man 3, yeah, completely.
Sure.
Yeah, took me a second.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, Shane Black. He's great. But so yeah, I mean,
I think we're living in an age of entertainment where people
talk about this stuff more, which I think is ultimately a good thing.
And so I do think if this show approaches his disassociated personality disorder
with just a smarter approach and a sharper eye and not be like, "Haha, you can make all these
identities," which is off-putting and not realistic. And you've got this world-class,
Oscar-nominated actor... do you get it... in the lead role. Ethan Hawke is no stranger-
Wait, no, I don't.
Okay, so his name's Oscar.
Oh, okay. No, I do.
Yeah. Okay.
I get it now.
Cool. Awesome. So no, I mean, Ethan Hawk and Oscar Isaac are no strangers to great performances and
prestige projects and projects that require a lot of emotional depth. So I guess I'm hoping
that they can approach the very dark side of Moon Knight with more nuance and
make it a better, more inclusive depiction for people watching.
Right. Don't play it just for drama. Don't play it just for
the weirdness that can happen when your superhero has multiple personalities.
Don't be like, "Which personality is it? Which one are you going to get? Who's
going to beat you up?" It's like, no, there's more to it than that.
Right. I understand things have to be heightened, but this is a real thing
that people deal with, and so there's got to be a good way to strike that balance,
so yeah, just more balance than what I understand is featured in the comics.
Yeah.
Yeah, which is to say-
I think none.
But we don't know.
We don't know.
There are a couple.
I'm going to say I don't know.
There are some really wonderful stories. I pulled up a couple of them.
Volume eight, so it was 2016 and 2017, they do this really remarkable, artistic, kind of
bonkers story about uncertainty and being the unreliable narrator. And as far as I know,
they've never really gracefully done a, "This is what mental illness
is really like. If you or somebody you know is struggling, please call the following number."
Right. Yeah. Yeah.
Right. Yeah.
He is. I mean, at his core, he is still a guy who punches people recreationally.
He's not necessarily a great, I don't know, icon for mental stability.
I mean, I'm not making any comments about this specifically, but there were criticisms
leveled against Joker for maybe conflating violence and mental illness in a way that was
unsettling to some people. Hopefully, Moon Knight can not do that.
Yeah, we want them to thread the needle effectively. But yeah, no, I think that that's
perfectly reasonable to hope for, because the trailer that we saw... We're recording this
not too long after Disney Plus Day, even though this will probably go up a little bit later-
It looked dark.
It definitely looks dark. And Oscar Isaac is doing something interesting, which is a very
exaggerated English accent.
Now, as far as I know, Mark Spector is not an
English character. So my guess is that that accent is one of these personalities that are
inside his head, these personas that are going to come through.
And so I'm curious to see how that is going to kind of bear out once we actually get to see the
show. So my guess is, if I'm correct, that that is going to be part of that explanation.
They're not going to shy away from it. I hope that what they do doesn't suck.
I mean, that's pretty obvious. I think we all think that. Nobody wants to see a sucky show,
I mean, unless it sucks a lot. Then I definitely want to see it.
Fans of Moon Knight don't want the show to suck. I think that you've made a brave statement here.
Fans of Moon Knight's would prefer that the show does not suck.
All right, let's get out of here, guys.
We can go. We're done for the day.
But before we go, one of the items here on the article on Looper.com...
which I'm very grateful to have in front of me, because as I've mentioned, I don't know
this character... acknowledgement that Moon Knight is Jewish. Now, I'm a Jewish person.
And I have that brain problem where anytime I see a famous Jewish person doing something cool,
I'm always like, "Oh, that guy is Jewish." And it's like that's trained into me as a child where
whenever someone hilarious or amazing does something on TV,
my dad or mom would always be like, "That guy is Jewish."
I'd be like, "Oh, that's interesting," so it's just my brain goes there first. So knowing that,
if Moon Knight is going to be Jewish on the show, let's play into that.
There's no other characters in the MCU that I know of that are of the Jewish faith or Jewish ethnic
background or anything like that. And it's clearly part of his origin story.
Back in 1984, we find out that he's the son of a rabbi. So it's kind of one of those things
that if you're going to be at all true to the character's backstory, you have to include it.
And one of the reasons why I'm kind of excited by this prospect is because
the first time I ever saw Oscar Isaac on screen was in the movie Ex Machina. And for the whole-
Great movie.
... movie, until I saw the credits roll, I was like, "David Krumholtz looks great. Wow."
...grew a beard.
I was floored. And then I was like, "Oh, that's a different man."
Now I'm imagining when I saw Inside Llewyn Davis and being like, "Wow,
David Krumholtz can sing and play the guitar?"
A lot of people make this mistake. A lot of people think that.
I did the same thing. The Santa Claus, I was like, "Man, that Oscar Isaac is a small Jewish boy."
He's a small, Jewish Christmas elf. Why is that small Jewish boy an elf at Christmas?
I made the same mistake in 10 Things I Hate About You.
Makes sense.
Right. Why is he a high school student?
Why has Oscar Isaac gone back in time to be in this movie I see here?
I think part of the problem is that we're all insane. Sorry. Continue.
Yeah. My point though is that, I mean, Oscar, Isaac is not Jewish,
and obviously, it's not ideal. You want representation.
You want people who are the thing that they're
playing to be the thing. But I mean, obviously you can't always do that.
It's okay in certain contexts, in certain situations. So if he's going
to play a Jewish person, I at least feel somewhat gratified that he looks
and has been mistaken for a very Jewish actor.
So it's not out of the realm of possibility that he could make it work is all I'm trying to say.
If you can get what's her name... Felicity Jones, is that her name who played Ruth Bader Ginsburg?
Please don't get me started on that.
I'm just saying-
There wasn't one girl from New York who could've...
Not one, none.
Apparently. And you know what?
Sarah Silverman was busy that day.
I know we don't talk about him anymore,
but Marty Ginsburg did not look like Armie Hammer. I'm just saying.
No offense. R.I.P. Marty.
My husband, Marty Ginsburg.
Didn't look like that.
He likes eating people. Anyway, so yeah, I mean, that's Moon Knight, right?
I'm sorry, mom. I'm sorry for-
That is Moon Knight. ... making jokes about the Ginsburgs.
This is a good one, right?
I don't know.
Yeah.
Was this a good one?
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